Quotes on immigration

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. [I]n my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here."

- Ronald Reagan

It should also be noted that Reagan also supported and signed the 1986 immigration bill, which gave amnesty and permanent residency to millions of immigrants.

"The anti-immigration issue that's now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement—these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that is different, and to stop immigration."

- Rudy Giuliani

I don’t know at what point in the last twenty years the republicans became anti-immigration. But Giuliani is right; our current fight against illegal immigrants just representation of a larger trend that has been going on for hundreds of years, and just as irrational.

I’ll end with a final quote from one of our nations greatest monuments:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-toss to me, I lift my lamp besides the golden door!